Saturday 11 November 2000 21.19 EST
First published on Saturday 11 November 2000 21.19 EST

At breakfast time on Wednesday, Tony Blair prepared himself to make the call congratulating George W. Bush on his election as American President. The words to be used, expressing the hope that the relationship between Downing Street and White House would remain as special and as strong as always, had been worked on in advance.

The telephone number which would connect No 10 to Austin, Blair to Bush, was ready to dial. This was not a call that Blair wanted to make. Though careful not to express any public preference between the candidates, it has never been a secret that he would much prefer to see the Oval Office occupied by Al Gore, fellow traveller of the Third Way, than Bush, a man whom Blair has never met.

Precisely because of that, it was felt that there should be no suggestion of grudgingness towards the Republican by Britain's Government. By eight on Wednesday morning, Jacques Chirac, the French President, had already tendered his congratulations to the Governor of Texas, and Robin Cook had telegraphed felicitations via the Today programme. Gore himself had phoned Dubya to concede defeat. Blair was about to address himself to the distasteful task - 'it was quite close,' says one No 10 official - when the American TV networks reported that the White House might not, after all, fall into the hands of the Republican.

The Prime Minister did not lift the phone and a brief exhalation of relief could be heard around Downing Street. The identity of the next President of the United States matters to few countries more than Britain, and to few people more than the British Prime Minister.

Politicians over here have gnawed their nails to the quick over the extraordinary cliffhanger over there as if their own futures were at stake. At the election night shindig thrown by the US ambassador in London, Tory and New Labour MPs, sustaining themselves into the small hours on bottles of Bud and hot dogs, gathered around a TV set in the basement "smoke-filled" room. When the US networks first gave Florida - and with it, apparently, the election - to Gore, the Labourites wearing his campaign buttons cheered for the Democrat. A Tory MP, poring over a sheet of numbers, despaired to another Conservative that it was "all over" for their candidate.

When the networks then moved Florida back into the too-close-to-call column, the Tories were wreathed in smiles, while the Labourites fell glum.

America has long mesmerised the British political class, and never more so than today. New Labour looted many of the techniques, replicated much of the rhetoric and borrowed large numbers of ideas from the Clinton-Gore New Democrats. There is a transatlantic taste to many of the Government's policies from the New Deal to the use of tax credits: a disability credit has just been added this past week to the credits for pensioners and working families. William Hague, attempting reverse engineering, has tried to rebuild the Tories with body parts donated by the Republicans. From 'free' schools to a new-found interest in the inner cities, many Tory policies are a pretty shameless attempt to ape the so-called 'Compassionate Conservatism' of George W. Bush.

Hague is even endeavouring to model his personal approach on Dubya. The Tory leader's conference speech this October contained many riffs which were rip-offs from Bush's speech to the Republican convention. For the down-home boy from Texas read the down-home boy from Yorkshire. To jump from such a tight election in America to conclusions about Britain is evidently dangerous. That will not stop British politicians doing exactly that.

If the Republicans wind up in control of not just Congress, but the White House too, a hat-trick they have not achieved in nearly 50 years, then it will be highly suggestive to the British political class that the tide of ideas has turned back in favour of the Right. At its lowest, it will be a psychological setback for New Labour and a morale booster for the Tories.

The Reagan-Thatcher revolution of the Right which dominated the Eighties was brought to an end by the victories of Bill Clinton there in 1992 and Tony Blair over here in 1997. What the progressive forces in Washington and London have not yet had time to do is establish a period in power of similar depth and longevity. It will look less like an era, and more like a brief interruption of right-wing rule, if the Democrats lose the White House. One of the Prime Minister's closest advisers, speaking to me from Washington, expressed the combination of anger and distress common among Blairites. 'No one can be sure, but you've got to think that Bush is going to be President. It's deeply shocking. It's a stolen election.'

New Labourites blame Gore for not exploiting America's sustained period of prosperity. 'Somehow the Democrats gave away the economy as an issue,' comments one senior figure at No 10. 'All the American campaign was really about was who you would rather have a drink with and what would you spend the surplus on: tax cuts or more public spending. We won't make that mistake.'

The choice of America's chief executive will have profound implications for British foreign policy. A Bush America will be, if not isolationist, certainly more unilateralist. The Foreign Office is trying to reassure itself that, under the tutelage of General Colin Powell and old man Bush, Bush Junior will not be the disaster that some British diplomats fear. This desperation to sound calm betrays some inner panic. A Bush America will be even more reluctant to pay its dues to the United Nations.

Condoleeza Rice, Dubya's foreign policy guru, has made noises about withdrawing American troops from peace-keeping in the Balkans. In the long term, a Bush Presidency could usefully goad Europe to take proper responsibility for its own backyard. In the short term, American disengagement is alarming, not least to the British. Bush's determination to press ahead with an anti-missile umbrella for the United States, an enthusiasm not shared by Gore, would present the Government with a choice that it would prefer not to make. Providing British facilities for the system will be inflammatory within the Labour Party and set Britain against many of its European partners.

Blair likes to portray Britain - and himself - as 'the bridge' across the Atlantic. Bridging a social democratic Europe and a Republican American would stretch even this Prime Minister's legendary suppleness to the limit. As the world waits for the identity of the next US President, few are monitoring developments more anxiously than Blair. When he is finally in a position to make that congratulatory call, the Prime Minister clings to the hope that he might yet be dialling Al Gore while fearing that next time he really will have to pick up the phone to George W. Bush.